US to require Canadians who are in the country for longer than 30 days to register with government
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(WASHINGTON) — Canadians who are in the United States for 30 days or longer and cross the land border will soon have to register their information with the U.S. government, according to a notice obtained by ABC News.
Foreign nationals who plan to stay in the U.S. for longer than 30 days will be required to apply for registration with the federal government and be fingerprinted starting on April 11, according to the rule, which was posted on the federal register on Wednesday.
Canadians are exempt from fingerprinting, which applies to other foreign nationals, according to an immigration lawyer who spoke with ABC News.
Traditionally, Canadians who cross the northern border by land and stay for longer than 30 days have not had to register with the federal government, but the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security can unilaterally change that rule.
Canadians who stay in the U.S. for 30 days or more and were not issued evidence of registration, such as Form I-94, at entry will need to complete the new Form G-325R through the myUSCIS online portal.
The rule would not require Canadians to apply for a visa but rather a different federal form to enter in the U.S.
Rosanna Berardi, an immigration attorney based in Buffalo, New York, told ABC News her firm has heard from many Canadians who have expressed “strong disappointment” in the new rule.
“It’s important to clarify that this measure specifically impacts Canadian citizens crossing land borders who intend to remain in the United States for periods exceeding 30 days,” she told ABC News. “Casual travelers visiting for tourism or shopping will not be affected. However, Canadian business professionals who regularly enter the U.S. for extended assignments will now face these new registration requirements.”
Berardi told ABC News that some Canadians are reconsidering their travel to the U.S. as a result of the “recent tensions” between the U.S. and Canada.
“Historically, Canadians have enjoyed visa-exempt status and have never been required to formally register their presence in the United States,” she said. “This development appears to align with recent tensions in U.S.-Canada relations, including the threat of the 51st state, the trade tariffs and other policy shifts.”
The Canadian Snowbird Association, which represents Canadian “snowbirds” who travel around the U.S. during the warmer months, said it is working with Congress to see if Canadians will be exempt from having to register.
Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said in an exclusive interview on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday that tech billionaires’ planned attendance at Monday’s inauguration is a sign of their “official surrender” to President-elect Donald Trump.
“As soon as [Mark] Zuckerberg said, ‘I’ve been invited. I’m going,’ the floodgates opened up and they were all there knocking, trying to be supplicants. So I look at this and I think most people in our movement look at this as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered,” Bannon told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Meta’s Zuckerberg and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos are among the tech executives set to appear at the inauguration, alongside close Trump ally Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Meta and Amazon are just two of the tech giants who have given money to President-Elect Trump’s inaugural fund.
In the wake of Trump’s victory in November a handful of tech’s most powerful executives have made trips to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for meetings with the president-elect. But despite the show of support, Bannon remains skeptical of their allegiance to Trump and the MAGA movement, specifically citing Zuckerberg’s recent alignment with the right.
“Zuckerberg’s, you know, road to Damascus came a little late. It was after the Fifth of November,” Bannon told Karl. “It’s very, you know, now wants to be a bro. He Kung Fu fights. He’s going to UFC. He’s got his hair done differently. He’s, he’s cut. That doesn’t hack it with me. That guy will flip on President Trump and he’ll flip on us in the second. When it’s convenient for him. He will flip.”
Meta declined to comment on Bannon’s remarks.
Bannon, a stalwart of the MAGA movement and major influence in Trump’s sphere during the early days of his first administration, has been one of the strongest supporters of the 45th president throughout his political career.
He frequently echoed Trump’s false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and served four months in prison after defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
During his interview with Karl, Bannon insisted that Trump’s message during Monday’s inaugural address will be less dark than the first time around.
“I think he’s going to try to unify the country around a course of action that we have to take, I think he’ll lay out the challenges, and he’ll lay out the beginning in some sort of 65-, 60,000-foot level — what his policies and proposals are. But I think it’ll all be about unifying the country and going forward together.”
Bannon cited the broad coalition that led to Trump’s return to the White House as a reason for the shift in tone.
“It’s a whole ecosystem … You have working-class African Americans. You have South Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, people are now prepared not just to stop voting for Democrats, but to vote for him.”
Bannon, told Karl that Trump has the ability to hold that wide-ranging coalition together like few other figures in American history.
“If you had to have somebody to do it, he’s the guy to do it,” Bannon said. “That’s why he is at the level of Washington and Lincoln.”
(WASHINGTON) — World Wresting Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon has been getting high marks from her meetings with the Republican senators who could decide whether she’ll be the next secretary of education.
McMahon has run a large government organization before — she led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019 in President-elect Donald Trump’s first term — but critics say she has little professional education experience beyond earning a teaching certificate from East Carolina University.
Since then, McMahon has primarily focused her time as a WWE executive, serving on the boards of colleges and state education agencies, and as chair of the board for think tank America First Policy Institute.
McMahon allies suggest her business experience will not only disrupt but also help reshape a federal agency that’s long been criticized by Republicans. As a confidant to the president-elect who co-chaired his transition, McMahon is uniquely positioned to carry out his promises to close the education department, restore power to parents, and inject choice in schools, they say.
“Linda McMahon is a win for parents and will root out radical ideology and get DEI out of America’s education system,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn wrote in a post on X after their meeting on Tuesday.
McMahon said she will carry out Trump’s platform if confirmed by the Senate. When asked if she would dismantle the Department of Education like Trump campaigned on in her new role, she told ABC News, “If I am secretary of education, I will certainly fall in with what the president’s policy is.” However, it would take 60 votes in the Senate to dissolve the department, which is highly unlikely with just a 53-47 Republican majority.
The slim majority may not be enough to create immediate changes at the department, but senators who talked to ABC News expect her to be the department’s next leader.
What are senators saying?
Ultimately, McMahon’s nomination rests with the 100 senators who will vote on whether to confirm Trump’s Cabinet picks. The Senate hasn’t yet formally set a date for a confirmation hearing for McMahon, but she told ABC News she is looking forward to it.
Like Trump’s most vulnerable Cabinet nominees, McMahon has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill in advise and consent meetings with everyone from newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune to freshman Republican Sen. Jim Banks. The GOP senators McMahon has met with have signaled a smooth process ahead.
“She’s awesome,” Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin told ABC News. “I’m looking forward to getting her over to be the secretary of education. She’s going to do the reform that needs to be done there.”
Mullin added, “I think she’s going to get through pretty easy. She’s really good.”
McMahon first met with Mullin and most of his colleagues on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP). This committee is expected to hold hearings for the nominees to lead the departments of Education, Labor and Health. Mullin explained that he and McMahon discussed reforming Washington, not outright dismantling agencies such as the DOE.
“I think all these federal agencies need to have a hard look at,” Mullin said. “The American people were very clear about that in the election, they gave President Trump and they gave the Republicans a mandate that they want the government to start working for them and not working for a party.”
McMahon and her team have been marching through the Senate halls for weeks. The meetings typically last between 30 to 45 minutes. After his meeting, HELP Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he and McMahon “speak the same language” on education issues.
Tuberville, R-Ala., also stressed that McMahon is the right leader to execute Trump’s goal of closing the education department, arguing states already have their own departments of education so Washington doesn’t need one.
“I’ve seen the downgrade of our curriculum, of the discipline, you know, between the students and the parents and the teachers,” Tuberville said. “We need to be more of a family when it comes to education, instead of an individual agency. We need to make it more personal, and I think that she’ll have a great opportunity to do that. She knows a lot about it.”
Tuberville is one of five current or former GOP members on the HELP committee who told ABC News the closed-door meetings with McMahon have been going “great.” McMahon has not told ABC News if her meetings will include Democrats.
HELP Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., told ABC News she wants to see full vetting of Trump’s nominees including FBI background checks. Baldwin said she hopes McMahon is going to be a “good steward” of the education department and looks forward to reviewing her case to be its next secretary.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., struck a different tone condemning Trump’s nominees.
“[McMahon] definitely wouldn’t be my first choice or my second choice, or third choice, or fourth choice, or fifth choice, or sixth or seventh,” Fetterman said, then added, “But I forgot they won, so, they can pick these kinds of things.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended his choice to vote with the minority of his party to keep the government open last week and his position as leader in an appearance on “The View” on Tuesday.
His comments come as some Democrats have publicly raised questions about their confidence in Schumer’s role as party leader following his move to allow Republicans to advance their led funding bill.
Schumer doubled down on the assertion he made on the Senate floor ahead of Friday’s closely watched vote: The Republican funding bill, called a continuing resolution or CR, was bad, but a government shutdown would have been worse.
“I knew it was a difficult choice, and I knew I’d get a lot of criticism or my choice, but I felt as a leader I had to do it,” Schumer told “The View” hosts.
Schumer said he and fellow Democrats “hated” the funding bill because it creates a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump, his adviser Elon Musk and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to “push around.”
But a shutdown, Schumer said “would have devastation like we have never seen.”
He said it would have given the Trump administration the freedom to slash programs it views as nonessential, with little to no recourse for Democrats to pursue. Programs like Medicaid and SNAP or funding for mass transit could have been indiscriminately slashed, he said.
“You have two choices: one bad, the other devastating,” Schumer said. “One chops off one of your fingers, the other chops off your arm.”
He said he was being “trolled” by Trump when the president congratulated him for passage of the bill on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
“He was trolling me. I know this guy. He’s trying to confuse people he always tries to confuse people,” Schumer said.
As a leader, Schumer said he had to act to avert a crisis down the road that would have been caused by a shutdown. But his position has not quelled calls within his own party for new leadership after Democrats appeared to some to be lacking in a strategy during Friday’s vote.
Schumer defended his role atop the caucus from ongoing criticism.
Responding to concerns that the party is somewhat aimless without an official leader, Schumer said Democrats have many talented leaders.
“When we don’t have a president, there is a lot of leaders. We have a great bench,” he said. “As for the Senate caucus, of which I am the leader, I should be the leader.”
Schumer touted his ability to recruit talent to win seats in the Senate, pointing to the 2020 election when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff successfully claimed both seats in Georgia.
He also likened himself to an “orchestra leader” conducting his caucus to help their talents come through.
“We have a load of talent in our caucus, and I’ll tell you one thing: We are united in going after Trump and showing the American people that he is making the middle class pay for the tax cuts on the rich.”
Schumer also promoted his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A warning.”
He encouraged a number of individuals to read the book, including the president.
“He doesn’t understand what Jewish people are like. And he does things that can lead to antisemitism,” Schumer said. “He should read the book. He could learn something.”
He also warned against the left “sliding into” antisemitism.
